Using music

“Research suggests that playing a musical instrument when you are older can give you a 36% lower risk of developing dementia and cognitive damage,” says Dr Glenville.

Can’t play an instrument? Don’t worry, singing can help too.

“Think how easily you can remember the words of songs that you sang years ago – and yet how much harder it often is to remember a poem or piece of prose that isn’t set to music.

“Word sequences are far more memorable when they are sung rather than spoken.”

Start knitting

Apparently knitting is set to be the new baking.

It isn’t just something elderly women do and it has recently become popular with celebrities.

Apart from helping you to relax it can also boost your mental health as it stimulates almost all of your brain.

When knitting, you need to stay focused, plan what you’re doing in advance and also use visual information and synchronise it with your movements.

Teach your body a new skill

There is a range of techniques to keep your brain alert that don’t have to be paper-based cognitive tasks.

Dr Glenville says: “Walking in a new park or taking up line dancing fires up new neural pathways that keep your brain in touch.

“Needing to remember the steps to a dance is also a wonderful workout for your brain – learning the flow and rhythm of the music stimulates cognitive activity, while learning and performing the steps is great for both your memory and your physical fitness.

“Active learning is the perfect complement for doing jigsaws, Sudoku and crosswords.”

Write things down

Pre-school leader Joanne New stole £4,400 from a village nursery by forging her husband’s signature.

Studies have shown that the act of writing something down forces your brain to recall it in a way that typing on your computer or phone does not.

Set yourself little challenges

Dr Glenville suggests the following simple games to give your brain a workout: “Counting backwards from 100 in twos, threes or fours is a good one, and you can make it harder by doing something else at the same time, such as tapping your foot.

Or try the ‘tip-of-the-tongue’ game – think of a theme, such as ‘food’, and name as many items relevant to the theme as you can in one minute.”

Most people can do 30. Can you double it?

Laugh

Who doesn’t love laughing? It not only lifts your mood but it’s also a great calorie burner.

However, researchers have also discovered that laughing can also minimise the damage that stress hormone, cortisol can cause (it damages certain neurons in our brain and affects learning ability as well as memory).

On top of that, laughter produces wave frequencies similar to a true state of meditation.